Saturday, 10 July 2010

Pressure on Education Secretary Michael Gove intensified today after he was criticised by a Cabinet colleague over his mishandling of the classroom-building programme.

Mr Gove will embark on a tour of the country to say sorry in person after giving schools false hope that their projects would be spared the axe...

Mr Gove, who was branded a 'miserable pipsqueak' in parliament over a series of blunders he made with the axed £55bn scheme, will go to nine schools in Sandwell, West Midlands and one in Doncaster, South Yorkshire to say sorry.

Interesting that there appears to be no comments on that first article.

If you're really sad like me and look at the DM site throughout the day, you would have noticed that the Gove stories were initially buried far down in the 'Today's headlines' section. Just like the story about Alan Budd's 'independent' OBR.

If you want to feel really ill, check out Peter Oborne here...just how far has Oborne got his tongue up Cameron's posterior?

I think the problem the DM has with Michael Gove is that the paper loves any minister who tries to cut public spending but I'm guessing many of the papers local publications are being bombarded by parents complaining about how the cuts are going to hurt them.

One of the building projects scrapped in my local area was meant to be a new build to allow two fairly small secondary schools to merge. The merger would have saved a great deal of money because staff costs and heating costs would have been cut dramatically, plus eventually the two old schools could have been knocked down and the land sold off to offset many of the costs of the new building.